


Hell's Gate

by Mhalachai



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, secret family ties, sort of a crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of revelations of Skye’s past, Phil Coulson wasn’t expecting to find out what happened to Skye’s parents, and certainly not from a former Russian agent turned SHIELD operative showing up unannounced on his plane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell's Gate

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the Agents of Shield episode, _Seeds._
> 
> Maybe an episode tag? I am on a lot of cold medication and stuck at home and decided to start writing and see where my imagination took me. I really… yeah. Okay. Maybe I just wanted to fling Phil Coulson out of an aircraft.
> 
> PS If they don’t have Natasha Romanoff show up on Agents of SHIELD later this season to promote the new Captain America movie, they will have missed an Opportunity.

Something was wrong.

Phil Coulson woke from a dead sleep with the bone-deep knowledge that something was wrong on the Bus.

He was on his feet in an instant, gun in his hand the next. His free hand went up to secure his earpiece in place. “May,” he said in a quiet voice.

“All clear, boss,” came Melinda May’s response from the cockpit. “We’re still a few hours out from Yellowknife.”

Phil took more comfort from her tone than her words. In the years they worked together, he’d learned there was more to how she said the words than what she said.

He was not, however, reassured.

“Copy,” he said to his earpiece, and in a minute he was stepping out of his quarters, dressed, unruffled, and heavily armed.

The plane was in the near-dark of night. Fitz and Simmons were both asleep in their bunks; Fitz looked as if he fell asleep in the middle of an experiment, door wide open, while Simmons lay curled up under her covers, door open a crack. She hadn’t been able to sleep in the darkness since the Chitauri virus nearly killed her.

Skye was sprawled on her stomach on the sofa, her laptop within reach on the ground. Her awkward position and the lack of a blanket made Phil feel a twinge of protectiveness somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, but she was sound asleep and not the likely cause of his anxiety.

With a look around the otherwise-deserted living quarters, Phil slipped out of the darkness into the cargo hold.

Ward was awake, running in place on the treadmill. He pulled his ear buds out as Phil descended the staircase. “Can’t sleep, boss?” Ward said, barely out of breath.

“Canadian airspace is always unsettling,” Phil said without much thought. The hold itself was exactly as usual – vehicles and equipment all secured against the turbulence of flight.

Ward frowned at Phil, but he didn’t press. He hadn’t known Phil long enough to know what was going through his head.

In his ear, Phil could hear May’s breathing, faint background noise from the cockpit as she kept them headed in the right direction. She hadn’t picked up anything strange on the monitors. She’d have dealt with it if she’d done so.

“You’ll be ready to go by the time we land?” Phil asked.

Ward’s frown deepened. “Always, sir.” He sounded offended that Phil might think any differently.

Phil let it go. Whatever was percolating in his head didn’t involve Ward.

Phil did a quick tour of the storage units before heading back up the stairs. Far from putting his mind at ease, the normality of the quiet plane made his spine crawl with tension.

Something was wrong, he was sure of it.

In spite of all that, having decided to speak with May in person, Phil nearly missed it. Walking through the living quarters, he glanced around to make sure the three youngest members of his team were still sleeping. Not one of them had moved, although Fitz was now snoring gently.

Phil was halfway to the cockpit before his mind’s eye registered the change in the scene, and his gun was out and up before he had the time to turn around.

Skye, who was still asleep in the same position as a few minutes before, now had a blanket covering her legs and back.

The only other person on the plane who might have been able to do such a thing was May, and May would never leave the cockpit for so small a reason.

The living area was still, nothing moved.

Not even the extra shadow by the window.

“Melinda,” Phil said under his breath, as he steadied his weapon at the shadow. A faint flutter of activity in his earpiece didn’t distract Phil as his attention narrowed down on the intruder on his plane, inches away from his sleeping, vulnerable team.

They stood like that for a moment in silence, Phil and the shadow. Then in twin lines of motion even quieter than that silence, Ward and May came out of the darkness, weapons upraised, taking their lead from Phil.

The shadow hadn’t moved, but Phil would swear he could hear it breathing.

With a jerk of his head, Phil whispered, “Out.”

The shadow slid away from the wall with a quiet, deadly grace. Phil saw the person’s clothing move into the light before the face; long slender legs, feminine hips, and a belt buckled with a small red and black hour glass insignia.

He barely had a chance to wonder what the hell was going on before Natasha Romanoff stepped into a patch of light, her hands up and empty.

“What?” Phil breathed, lowering his weapon. At his side, May kept her weapon trained on Natasha.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. It had been a long time since Phil had seen Natasha, not since New York, but he hadn’t forgotten that particular expression.

 _Why are you here?_ he asked in the modified British Sign Language that Strike Team Delta, Hawkeye and the Black Widow, had perfected for covert use over the years.

Natasha opened her eyes wide, then shifted her gaze to a point over Phil’s shoulder. She lowered her hands enough to sign, _Following rumours._

May made a soft sound of discontent low in her throat, but Phil held up his hand. Skye shifted in her sleep, murmuring. “Down to the hold,” Phil whispered to his agents. To Natasha, he signed, _you could have called._

 _So could you,_ Natasha shot back, her hands flying. She turned and regarded Ward, her head tilting just a fraction. Even without seeing her face, Phil knew her expression, that she was looking at Ward as if he were a new and interesting weapon.

Ward didn’t move until Phil crossed the space between them and put his hand on the small of Natasha’s back. She leaned into the contact, obliterating any illusion of personal space, and Phil finally realized what had dragged him out of a dead sleep. He had caught a hint of Natasha’s scent, a mix of leather and fabric of her uniform with the rasp of steel from her knives, the ozone lingering from her Widow’s Bite, and the spice of her favourite perfume.

She must have been close to him, nearly on top of him, for him to have woken up at all.

He deliberately breathed in, and pushed Natasha after Ward. May was at his heels, leaving the sleeping agents in their oblivious stillness.

Into the hold and down the stairs, Phil walked at Natasha’s side. She was in flat shoes and shorter than Phil remembered; her red hair gleaming in the harsh overhead lights, her back muscles moving under the press of his palm.

Ward waited until May closed the hold door before spinning on Natasha and Phil both. “Sir?” he asked pointedly, his sidearm held ready at his side.

His agent’s annoyance made Phil smile faintly. “I take it that you’ve never met SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff,” he said, stepping away from Natasha to lean on the lab’s glass door.

“I’ve never had the pleasure,” Natasha said in the driest voice possible. Ward winced, but didn’t put his gun up.

“Why exactly is Agent Romanoff sneaking around the plane at four in the morning, sir?” Ward pressed.

“A very good question,” Phil said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s up, Natasha?”

Natasha glanced up at May, who was standing on the overhead ramp glaring down at them. “Agent May,” she said.

“Agent Romanoff,” May retuned, her voice cold and emotionless. For some reason, that made Natasha smile.

“You two know each other?” Ward asked.

May flicked a glance in his direction. “We’ve never met,” she said.

Natasha turned her attention back around to Phil. “You went after Loki by yourself,” she said flatly.

It had been nearly a year before, tied in with the overlapping memories of Tahiti, but Phil kept his focus. “So did you.”

“He was locked in a cage then.”

“The helicarrier was falling out of the sky. We were out of options.”

Natasha’s green eyes narrowed. “You walked in without an extraction plan. Sloppy, Agent Coulson.”

“You’re the one who flung herself around the city on a Chitarui air skidoo, you call that an extraction plan?”

Natasha sauntered towards him. “You missed the best part of the fight, lying around in Medical,” she told him, then she was right in front of him and her hand was balling up and Phil made himself stand still, but all she did was punch him in the shoulder.

He smiled at that. It was the most demonstrative as Phil had ever seen Natasha become. But his smile quickly faded. For Natasha to have snuck onto the plane and not come directly to him, and so soon after what happened at the Academy and Phil’s unauthorized trip to Mexico... she had not done so to see him, he feared.

“Ward,” Phil said, never breaking eye contact with Natasha. “Head on up to the cockpit and keep my plane in the air.”

Ward hesitated, looking at Phil as if he had misheard, but Phil never looked at the man, and after a moment Ward crossed the floor and moved up the stairs. He slowed for a moment as he passed May, but then he was through the door with a final click.

The room seemed to let out a long sigh as the silence settled once more.

“What is this about?” Phil asked. He knew, and she knew that he knew, but he couldn’t jump to that conclusion, not yet.

“It’s about a rogue hacker who made her way onto your team,” Natasha said, stepping away. She hopped up onto the back of Phil’s convertible, brushing a spot of dust off Lola’s chrome. “A hacker who has a lot of guardian angels out there in the world.”

“Skye’s earned her place on my team,” Phil said carefully. The last time he’d checked, Natasha only had a Level Seven clearance. The story of Skye’s placement in the foster system was a Level Eight secret.

“Are you sure she wasn’t born to it?” Natasha asked pointedly.

Above their heads, May shifted in place, her feet ghosting over the metal grating. Phil didn’t look away from Natasha. “This is above your clearance level.”

Natasha’s eyebrow arched. “Above my SHIELD clearance level,” she said as she stepped into his personal space. She stared up at him, green eyes wide and clear. “I wasn’t always with SHIELD.”

And in her words, Phil heard the promise of secrets, of answers, and he bit the inside of his cheek because now, after everything that had happened, he couldn’t _not_ find out. He’d come too far.

“So tell me,” Phil said.

Natasha shook her head. “Not here,” she said. “This isn’t a story for SHIELD.”

“Technically I’m a SHIELD agent, and so are you,” Phil pointed out.

Natasha shrugged. She walked across the room to the cupboard that held the parachutes and opened it. “We’re in Canadian airspace right now, aren’t we?”

Phil looked up at May. The woman shook her head in warning at him. “Yes, we are,” he said, and May clenched her jaw in annoyance.

“How long has it been since you did a wilderness hike?” Natasha asked as she stepped into the parachute harness.

“It’s good to see that your time with another handler hasn’t impacted your sense of humour,” Phil said, but he was crossing the room as he said it. “Change of plans, Melinda. You’re in charge on this mission. If I can’t make it there, pick me up on your way back.”

“And what should I tell the team?” May asked, icicles dripping from her words.

“Tell them I needed a vacation.” Phil plucked two duffels of survival supplies from the cupboard and handed one to Natasha. “You’re in charge until I get back.”

“Skye’s going to think I shoved you out of an airlock,” May muttered.

“Again,” Phil reminded her. He buckled his parachute. “Open the hold door when we’re clear to jump.”

With one last glare, May stalked out of the cargo hold and closed the door behind her with a clang. Natasha looked after her with a faint smile. “Her reputation precedes her.”

“She’s the best agent I’ve ever worked with,” Phil said, knowing that Natasha would understand the full meaning of that statement.

“Good,” Natasha said with a nod.

The faint sounds of the plane changed, as the cargo hold door began to unlock.

“Care to explain to me why we’re jumping out a plane at five in the morning over a Canadian ice field?”

“Information,” Natasha said, raising her voice. “What else?”

Information she wasn’t willing to share in a SHIELD vehicle. Phil sighed. Only a few minutes back in her company, and he was already exhausted. “Is it worth it?” he asked, even thought he already knew the answer.

“Worth jumping out a plane at five in the morning,” Natasha called as the cargo bay door slid open. She tossed Phil a length of rope. “Hold on, boss.”

And with that, they jumped.

The sky was clear and cold, with the faintest hint of grey on the eastern horizon. Phil thought he heard Natasha laughing as they fell, but the wind snatched the sound away from him. His heart pounded with exhilaration at the jump, the fall, the pull of gravity on the way down. He hadn’t done this in far too long.

He pulled the ripcord on his parachute as soon as he saw Natasha move to do the same; the jerk and drag of the parachute deploying did away any remaining dregs of sleep. Each holding tight to their end of the rope, he and Natasha drifted along until they were over treetops, sliding lazily in the early morning stillness down to a meadow.

The earth reached up to grab them; Natasha released her parachute and rolled to bleed away the impact, while Phil braced himself for the jolt up his legs at the landing.

The procedure was old-hat for Phil, bringing back memories of his service days. They bundled up the thin parachutes and stuffed them into the bags, then they were moving off and away from the landing site through the knee-high grass, damp with dew. The moonlight was enough to guide them along the meadow to a low fence which let out onto a faint dirt road heading south. Nothing moved in the night air.

Natasha was quiet as they settled in to their walking rhythm. Phil shifted his parachute pack and duffle until the straps no longer rubbed at his chest scar. Natasha would start when she was ready.

Nearly half an hour had passed, and the pre-dawn light in the east had glowed past the grey stage, when Natasha finally spoke. “You went after Agent Lumley in Mexico last week,” she said.

“Did I?”

She ignored the question. “I have favours owed to me from before my SHIELD days. One of those favours has been keeping an eye on Lumley.”

“Why?”

Natasha stopped by the side of the dirt road. She slid her duffle to the ground and dug around for the water bottle. “To see who would come for him,” she said after she drank. “Do you know who killed the rest of his team?”

“Do you?” Phil asked evenly.

Natasha kept her water bottle out as she shifted the duffle onto her back and started walking once more. “I have an idea.” She trudged down the road, head bent. It took her another few minutes before she asked, “Did Lumley tell you what his team found in China?”

Phil grabbed Natasha’s arm, spinning her around. In the faint pre-sunrise glow, he could see the stubborn expression on her face. “We both know he did, and we both know why you were on that plane,” Phil said. His fingers held Natasha in place. “I just need to know one thing. Whose side of this are you on?”

Natasha didn’t move. She could have broken every finger in his hand and left him for dead before he even reached for a weapon; he’d seen her do it to others when they touched her without permission. But she just stared up at him. “Why did you bring Skye on to your team?” Natasha asked. “Not initially, but why did you keep her?”

Phil released Natasha’s arm. “Because Skye is a good person,” he said. He was sick of all this, the games, the lying, the ugly suspicions in his head. “She’s smart and quick and resourceful and she has a good heart. Do you know how rare that is in our line of work?”

Still, Natasha didn’t move. “You want her to be a SHIELD agent.”

“I want her to make a difference!” Phil said, his voice rising in the thin morning air. “We send these kids to the Academy, look for them to fit into these perfect agent moulds, but how many of the agents we really need come out of the Academy?” He stepped back and around Natasha, moving away down the road. Without looking over, he knew that Natasha was matching his pace. “You and Barton, neither of you stepped foot in the Academy, and you’re the best agents I’ve ever served with. You have skills that can never be taught inside those buildings, and those are the talents we need.”

“Need for what?” Natasha asked.

“Saving the world, for starters.” Phil started to reach into his duffle, but Natasha interrupted him by pressing her water bottle into his hand. He took it and drank before handing it back to her.

“She’s good enough to save the world?” Natasha asked, subdued.

“She’s close.” Phil rubbed his hand over his face. His interrupted sleep was beginning to press in on him. “I don’t know. Maybe her heart’s too big to make the hard decisions.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Natasha said. “It’s a rare thing, in this line of work. To have the luxury of being kind.”

Phil caught Natasha’s arm again, but gently this time. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

Natasha sighed. She looked up at the sky, at the beginning reds and pinks bleeding into the grey. “I made a promise, a very long time ago,” she said. “Only I wasn’t able to keep up my end of the bargain.”

“What was the promise?” Phil asked.

“To keep an eye on that girl,” Natasha said. “To make sure no one turned her into a weapon.”

Phil let his breath out through his nose. Natasha’s records put her at just under thirty years old, not much older than Skye. “What sort of weapon did you think she might become?”

Natasha closed her eyes. “The kind that nations go to war over,” she said wearily. Turning, she took Phil by the arm and led him down the road.

 “Skye is relatively normal,” Phil said, patting Natasha’s arm with his free hand. “She’s not a weapon.”

Natasha sighed. “You know how people can see potential where there is none.”

“Tasha,” Phil said. “Tell me what you know. Please.”

Natasha shifted her pace so she matched Phil’s steps. “In the early eighties, some of the Soviet intelligence operatives picked up some rumours of a woman in a remote province of China,” Natasha began. “The rumour was that the woman was the daughter of a god.”

 “An interesting rumour to be floating around rural Communist China,” Phil said.

“Soviet intelligence dispatched an agent to track this woman down, to see if she had powers that could be harnessed,” Natasha went on. “They sent their best agent.”

“Was it someone from the Black Widow program?” Phil asked. He knew enough about the Soviet intelligence circles to know that the Black Widow training program had been running since the end of World War II, even if that was all that SHIELD had ever gathered.

Natasha turned her head to look at him for a long movement. “No,” she finally said. “They wanted a different kind of agent. One who could wander around rural China and attract a different kind of attention.”

“Who?” Phil pressed.

Natasha took a deep breath. “One of their very best. He trained me, I know how good he is.” She paused. “A ghost operative.”

Phil stopped dead. “They sent a ghost operative after this woman?” he demanded. Natasha nodded. “But…” Phil’s mind was racing. The Soviet ghost operatives were supposed to have been myth, a legend that spies told their children at night to scare them straight. They said the ghost operatives were wraiths, not needing a physical body to lay waste to everything around them.

They said the ghost operatives could go anywhere, be anyone, and you’d only know as they were killing you.

“Why?” Phil demanded. “To kill her?”

“At first, to find her,” Natasha said. “Once contact had been made, then he was to use his judgement.”

“To kill her,” Phil pressed.

“To see if she could be used as an asset,” Natasha clarified. “Coulson, they said she was the daughter of the god of Hell. Can you imagine what that sounded like back then?”

“Like insanity,” Phil said. “This was way before we knew anything about the Asgard, or aliens. What did they expect to find?”

“Honestly? Someone who could slay people with the snap of her fingers,” Natasha said. She walked over to a large rock at the side of the road, and sat down on it. “Sitting on a throne of bones, all that.”

“And what did they find?”

Natasha adjusted the lacing on her boot. “The ghost operative found a young woman whose father had died,” she said quietly. “The villagers had just buried her very human father and were coming after the woman with the equivalent of pitchforks and torches to drive her out of the village as bad luck. The operative got her out of there before anything could happen. He offered to protect her wherever she was going.”

“How did that work?”

The corner of Natasha’s mouth curled up in amusement. “She kicked him in the balls and took off down the road.”

“I like her.”

“But apparently she changed her mind, because she and the operative teamed up to head south. The woman, Wei Lien, had some idea in her head to sneak over the border into Hong Kong.”

“And he agreed to help her?”

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “You know what they warn us about when we’re assigned to protect sensitive resources?”

Phil did; in spite of the warnings, how many times had he seen it happen to otherwise spectacular agents? “He developed feelings for her."

“Oh, it was more than that.” Natasha got to her feet and set off down the road. “They fell in love.”

 “They fell in…” Phil stared at Natasha, his stomach seizing up in horrified realization. He ran to catch up with Natasha. “Are you trying to tell me that a Soviet ghost operative is Skye’s _father_?”

“He certainly thought he was,” Natasha said, staring at the horizon. The warm light from the rising sun set her hair ablaze in shades of rubies and gold. “Lien got pregnant and when the British extraction team came for her and her baby, he killed the entire team to protect them.”

“Did the mother have powers?” Phil asked, head spinning at the implications, of the impossibility of it all. That Skye, his Skye, was in any way the offspring of a Soviet killing machine.

“If she did, he never told me about them.” Natasha pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. “All he ever told me about Lien was that she was kind, and she was brave.”

“What happened to her?”

Natasha shrugged. “In order to keep her safe, the operative disobeyed his orders and hid Lien and the baby in a village. Then he left, to divert anyone who was after them.” She shook her head. “The Soviets tracked him down in Guizhou province. When he wouldn’t reveal where he left Lien, they took him back to Russia and sent in a local team to find the woman.”

Skye’s mother, Phil reminded himself. They were talking about Skye’s mother, on the run from agents from around the world. “What happened to the local team?”

“It’s only rumour,” Natasha said. “And I only found this after a lot of digging, years later, from someone who was a child at the time and hid to avoid the shooting.”

“Tasha.”

Natasha looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Lien tried to escape with the baby, but they took her out with a rifle. She fell dead in the road, still holding the baby. When the baby started crying, everyone within eyesight died on the spot.”

“That’s not possible,” Phil objected. “That’s not Skye.”

Skye wouldn’t do anything like that, couldn’t, not even as an infant. Such powers, to take life with a simple cry… Skye had never exhibited anything like that, not powers of any kind. Certainly not something so… horrible.

“My informant told me that he saw something else, that day.” Natasha adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “He said there was a shape. Something dark, that appeared just before everyone died. He said it was shaped like a person, but it had wings.”

“Your informant doesn’t sound very reliable,” Phil pointed out. The sun was rising now, and he wished he’d taken the time to grab his sunglasses.

“Maybe not,” Natasha said easily. “But he said the thing picked up the baby and kissed it, before putting her back down in her dead mother’s arms. That’s when the other teams arrived and all hell broke loose.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Phil asked. “This is rumour and speculation, there’s no hard evidence—“

“I made a promise to the operative to find out what happened to his daughter,” Natasha interrupted. “Do you know what they did to him, for disobeying like that? What they put him through?”

“How do you?” Phil demanded. “In all those debriefings after you joined SHIELD, you never mentioned once that you knew a ghost operative.”

“That’s because he’s dead,” Natasha said, her temper flaring at last. “He’s dead and the last thing I promised him was that I would find out that his daughter was alive, and that she was safe.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Phil asked. “Why now, why not when she joined my team?”

“Because I never knew where the SHIELD team took her!” Natasha exclaimed. “And when you found Lumley, that’s when I found out that she was with you.”

“That it’s Skye.”

Natasha looked up at him, and Phil suddenly realized that she had been very careful about what she said, never committing to anything that would expressly connect Skye with her story. “Is she safe with you?” Natasha asked.

“Safe from what? Are there agents still after her?”

“If someone comes for her, will you keep her safe?” Natasha pressed.

Phil resisted the urge to scream. He’d forgotten how infuriating Natasha’s logic could be at times. “Skye is on my team,” he said forcefully. “You know what that means to me.”

For some reason, this made the tension bleed out of Natasha’s stance. “I do know,” she said, and gave a nod. “I know.” She turned, and headed off down the road. “It was good to see you again, Coulson.”

“What was her name?” Phil called after Natasha. “The baby, what was her name?”

Natasha turned and walked backwards for a few steps. “An,” she told him. “It means hope.”

“An,” Phil muttered to himself, glancing down at his shoes. “Jesus Christ.”

When he looked up again, Natasha had disappeared into the flat open countryside.

Phil sighed, not totally surprised. He hitched his bag up higher and started walking again.

It took him two hours to find a small Southern Alberta town, full of cowboy boots and pick-up trucks, and three more to find someone willing to drive him into the Calgary airport for him to catch a flight to Yellowknife.

* * *

“Tell me,” Skye begged, literally hanging on Phil’s sleeve. “Why did you jump out of a plane over Alberta in the middle of the night?”

“I bet it was aliens,” Fitz said, passing them both on his way to the kitchen. “It’s always aliens.”

“Or something more secret that we’re allowed to know about,” Simmons said disapprovingly, taking the popcorn out of the microwave. “Level Eight and all that.”

“Come on,” Skye prompted, sliding over to steal a handful of popcorn from the bowl. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“Don’t you all have reports to be writing up?” Phil asked, reaching into the fridge for a beverage. “I know you haven’t written them, because you’ve been sitting around here gossiping since we left Yellowknife.”

Skye fake-pouted while FitzSimmons made themselves scarce (with, Phil noted, the popcorn bowl). “If I finish my report, will you tell me what happened?” Skye asked.

“If you finish your report, we can both get on with our lives,” Phil told her, tossing a bottle of water at her.

“Boss, come on!” Skye persisted. “Ward’s been sulking for days and May’s even more of a sourpuss than usual. What happened?”

Phil opened his water. He had told himself he needed be honest with Skye, and he wasn’t about to go back on that promise, but… not yet. He needed to figure out what it all meant. “Skye, I will tell you,” he said after a minute. “Just not right now.”

She stared at him, eyes wide at his sudden change in tone. “Okay, boss,” she said with a quick nod. “Anytime you want.”

He gave her a small smile as he headed to the cockpit. May was once again at the controls, scanning the open skies ahead.

Phil had told May everything on the return to the plane, barring the bits about the god of hell. She had been more concerned about Natasha’s interest in Skye than about the rumours of killing power in a baby.

“So,” Phil said conversationally. “Is our flight plan all set?”

May didn’t deign to reply.

“Sounds good,” Phil said, and turned to leave. “I’ll be in my office.”

May’s silence was the only farewell he expected.

Up in his office, Phil flung himself into his chair. He stared down at his tablet, and at the research that had kept him busy all morning.

Since New Mexico, humanity had solid proof of races of aliens that had once been called gods. Thor, once a myth from the past, was a living, breathing person; the God of Thunder. Loki, too, had been seen as a god of trickery. Who was to say that no other gods were creeping around the Earth, and perhaps more recent than a thousand years before?

Phil rubbed his eyes. Professor Elliot Randolph, an expert on Norse mythology and who SHIELD knew was an Asgard who had lived for centuries on Earth, had responded to Phil’s request for help with a tersely-worded email, a few scans of old documents, and a very clear warning.

Phil looked at the tablet, and swiped one particular image bigger.

 _Do not go looking into the lives of gods,_ Randolph had warned. _Not even the god of Hel._

Phil looked at the image of the woman on his screen. Dark hair, large eyes, and death in her touch.

_**Especially not the god Hel**._

Phil wondered what he was going to do. Natasha’s fantastical story had claimed Skye’s father was one of history’s most dangerous agents, while Skye’s mother was the daughter of a god.

A god who, according to centuries of legend, carried death on her tongue and vengeance with her every step, who was named after the realm of the dead itself.

A god who was daughter to the monster that had killed Phil, so many months ago.

Hel, daughter of Loki.

Whose granddaughter was potentially in the cargo hold, pestering Grant Ward about details of her after-action mission report.

Phil put his head in his hands. What the hell kind of doors had he opened this time?

_Hell, indeed._

**Author's Note:**

> In mythology, [Hel is Loki’s daughter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hel_\(being\)). In the [Marvel comic-verse](http://marvel.com/universe/Hela) too (only she goes by Hela). 
> 
> Yeah I'm not sure what this is either.


End file.
